Bint Jbeil expats give their town American treatment.

Byline: Ali Beydoun

Summary: Walking through the streets of Bint Jbeil, one is likely to hear bangs and booms, but it has nothing to do with war. It's the music of post-war construction. Clouds of dust disappear around the town to reveal tall slabs of concrete frames for new homes, piles of white stone, tractors, bulldozers and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's wide grin peeking out at you from every corner.

People and Places

BINT JBEIL: Walking through the streets of Bint Jbeil, one is likely to hear bangs and booms, but it has nothing to do with war. It's the music of post-war construction. Clouds of dust disappear around the town to reveal tall slabs of concrete frames for new homes, piles of white stone, tractors, bulldozers and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's wide grin peeking out at you from every corner.

Bint Jbeil has a history of occupation that is only now beginning to shed itself for a new image of creamy white buildings, clean glass windows, and re-built "traditional" souqs.

Bint Jbeil has long been synonymous with war, but has recently become known for its ability to reconstruct itself.

And there's a third Bint Jbeil, which pops up only in the summer months: the American Bint Jbeil.

While Lebanese expatriates flock back to their home country throughout the year, in Bint Jbeil the returnees are likely to spend their vacations in luxurious villas that have been blossoming among the hills surrounding the main town,

A walk through the avenues along these hills reveals high stone walls and massive brass gates that lead to lush green gardens surrounding these villas, evoking a high-end suburb in southern California, instead of a traditional Lebanese village that has suffered years of war and occupation.

Garbage bins stand outside the gates of each home, while a myriad of Mercedes, BMWs and Lexus SUVs trail bits of American slang behind them as they drive by.

"Before and during the occupation, Bint Jbeil was just a small town," explained its mukhtar, Hajj Ghassan Beydoun.

The Israeli invasion in 1978, was the spark that saw many inhabitants leave for the US, as well as Canada, France and Australia.

"After the liberation in 2000, people have started to come back and Bint Jbeil has grown by 50 percent," Beydoun said.

One can find the largest concentration of Bint Jbeilers in the city of Dearborn, Michigan, where many have made comfortable lives opening a variety of businesses, working in car factories, or receiving degrees in law, medicine and engineering.

Successful migrs have dotted the hills around Bint Jbeil with their villas, and brought back pieces of America with them.

Summertime is when the following scene becomes common: a man sitting outside his home smoking a nargileh, wearing a Detroit hat and a Pistons jersey, while a teenage girl, her hair in long Caribbean braids, wearing capris, a striped tank top, and a trendy red beret, exchanges phone numbers with another girl in American English.

"a three, four, three a did you get that? Good."

According to shop owner Ali Heidous, who hasn't left the town in 49 years, everything improves in the summer, "when people return and there's more movement, more sounds, the city is just more beautiful."

The lively summer months see the town's population balloon to around 10,000 people, in marked contrast to the slower winter, when the figure drops to about 4,000.

It's as if the native population receives a jolt of energy when their relatives return for the summer months and now, given the current round of (post-2006) reconstruction, there is an atmosphere of positive energy in the air as a new Bint Jbeil takes the place of the old.

But this energy is short-lived, since the inevitable end of summer approaches and sees the migrs pack up and leave.

"They only stay two months, then they lock their gates and go," said Sikni Beydoun, a middle-aged Bint Jbeil native whose relatives are in the US.

The locals described the wintertime Bint Jbeil as a place where the shops close and people are in school,with the population in Beirut or abroad.

Will the villas on the hills ever be permanently populated, or will they continue to function only as destinations for summer excursions?

The returnees claim that they'd like to come back, but cite various reasons that keep them from doing so.

"Physically, I feel more connected to America," said 34-year-old Sonia Bazzi, who left Lebanon as an infant in 1976.

Since most of Bint Jbeil's expats began returning only after the 2000 liberation, they've become accustomed to the American way of life, after spending a few decades abroad.

Readily-available electricity, hot water and air conditioning are 24/7 American luxuries that don't exist in Bint Jbeil, making it difficult for potential returnees to imagine a permanent residence in the town.

Bazzi added other gripes, besides the electricity- and water-related problems: "I get annoyed by the lack of street signs. The driving really stinks; we're used to the organized lifestyle in America."

The elderly emigrants, who have much deeper roots in Bint Jbeil, don't necessarily imagine a permanent return, for many of the same reasons. And some of their biggest concerns are related to health care.

"In America I have social security, and free health care; the government takes care of me there," said 85-year-old Mariam Irani, known as Umm Assem.

"And the electricity doesn't go out," she added.

Looking around exasperatedly, 73-year-old Amin Beydoun asked: "Where is the hospital here? Did the government build any?"

"Because I have social security," he added, "I go to the AUB hospital when I'm here. I get all my medicine from America. Medicare even sends my medicine all the way from the US to Bint Jbeil."

While these lack of American luxuries are sources of irritation for emigrants, there remains something that calls Bint Jbeil emigrants back to their homeland every year.

"I feel spiritually connected to this land, and more free to express my religion," said Bazzi, as she adjusted her powder blue hijab.

She explained that in the post-9/11 climate in the US, it has become increasingly difficult for her to be a devout Muslim woman, while in Lebanon and particularly Bint Jbeil, she feels free to practice her religion without any negative social backlash

Lebanese-Americans supposedly enjoy a more comfortable life in the US, but they still struggle there, in a society where their race and religion have recently become misunderstood identities.

"[People here] think we have it easy in America, but it's not easy living outside your homeland," Bazzi continued, arguing that just because one sees luxurious homes on the Bint Jbeil hills, not everyone in the US has it easy.

Meanwhile, Bazzi added, the more relaxed rural village lifestyle that Bint Jbeil offers in the summer suits her.

"Believe it or not, here people don't worry about life as much as we do in America. It's hard for us to relax. We always have to be busy and working," she said. "In many ways I envy [the locals]. I could never live here permanently anymore. I always have to be doing something."

As Bazzi finished, her 6-year-old daughter shouted, "I'M BORED I'M BORED I'M BORED!"

For Sam Beydoun, a middle-aged father of four spending his vacation "back home" in Bint Jbeil, it's the summer weather as well as the social atmosphere that he misses.

"In Michigan you could be grilling outside and it suddenly starts raining and you have to run inside;Aa the weather here, the breeze, the sun, is nicer."

Just as the Mount Lebanon resort town of Bhamdoun sees, during the summer, the phenomenon of fellow Kuwaitis greeting each other and making long-neglected visits, some of Michigan's own social life takes place here, for a few months a year.

"You get to see all your relatives and all your neighbors, they come here from Dearborn," said Beydoun, arguing that Bint Jbeilers mix with their neighbors more in Lebanon than they would in the US because of the faster-paced American culture.

The emigrants appear to be torn between wanting to live in Bint Jbeil permanently, as most still call it their homeland, but invariably cite reasons to delay such a decision.

As Beydoun put it: "At this time, given the situation in the world, with the wars and the instability, I choose to live in America as my home but in the future, if things get better, I would choose here."

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